Journalist Helen Thomas remembered as a trailblazer during Troy funeral

Aug. 15, 2013

A memorial service is held at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Troy on Thursday, in memory of Helen Amelia Thomas, a legendary journalist and native Detroiter. / Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Following a memorial service for Helen Thomas, her sisters, Isabella Thomas, 98, left, and Josephine Geha, 95, leave the church with family and friends greeting them. / Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press

A program from the memorial service for Helen Thomas. / Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press

Helen Thomas' image is displayed at a service Thursday at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Troy. / Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press

Helen Thomas attends the Glamour Women of the Year Awards at the American Museum of Natural History. / Getty Images

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From an immigrant family on Detroit's east side to the front row of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas paved the way for women in journalism, covering 10 presidents in a 70-year career that took her around the world.

But for Thomas – who died last month at the age of 92 – “she always considered Detroit home,” said her niece Suzanne Geha.

Geha and others remembered Thomas at a memorial service Thursday in Troy at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, the same congregation she attended as a child growing up in Detroit.

Thomas was “a giant lady” who left an “impact on so many people,” the Rev. Joseph Antypas, pastor of the church, told the crowd. “We are proud of our own Helen Thomas...an American icon.”

Geha, a veteran TV reporter and anchor in Michigan, told personal stories about Thomas, including a new one about how she once dated future President John F. Kennedy before he was married. "He was too fresh," Geha recalled Thomas saying about Kennedy.

“She didn’t like him as a date, but she liked him as a president,” Geha said with a smile. Thomas would later marry a reporter, who died in 1982.

Born in Kentucky to immigrants from what is now Lebanon, Thomas moved with her family to Detroit when she was 3 years old. They lived in a house on Heidelberg Street that is in a location that now contains the Heidelberg Project, a public art display.

In her neighborhood, there were “Arabs living alongside Jews, Germans and Italians, Polish and Irish, whites and blacks, all seeking the same American dream for themselves and their children in the land of freedom, the land of hope and promise,” said Geha.

Thomas was proud of her ancestry, which endeared her to many in metro Detroit's Arab-American community, but she told the Free Press in 2010: “I never felt hyphenated. I never felt I was an Arab-American. I felt I was an American.”

Her parents couldn't read or write English, but they stressed to Thomas and her other daughters the importance of college education. Thomas’ father was ahead of his time in the 1930s, said Geha, telling his daughters to be independent, educated, and self-reliant instead of relying on a man for financial support.

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Thomas was seen as a trailblazer for women in journalism, fighting for them to get accepted as equals. She was the first woman to be an elected officer and president of the White House Correspondents Association and the first woman accepted in the Gridiron Club, a group of journalists, Geha said. She was the chief White House correspondent for UPI, a columnist, and the author of six books.

"What she did for women is unbelievable," Geha said. "She brought a tsunami of women and minorities" into journalism because of her achievements.

Thomas first became “smitten with journalism” while working at the newspaper at Eastern High School in Detroit. She then graduated from what is now Wayne State University. Thomas' mother wanted her to stay in Detroit and work one of the three main daily newspapers, but Thomas said that Washington, D.C. “was where I want to be” because that's where “the news originates,” Geha said.

“She was an inspiration to me,” said Mae Bashi, 30, of Warren, who received a diversity scholarship at Wayne State University in Helen Thomas’ name. “It brought tears to my eyes hearing all the work she did, her accomplishments, her dedication.”

Anan Ameri, the founding director of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, which has a bust of Helen Thomas, said that “Helen was a role model. She was powerful, honest, spoke her mind...She had a strong sense of justice.”

Thomas spoke up for the “Palestinian people, against the war in Iraq,” said Ameri.

In recent years, Thomas became increasingly outspoken in her views, challenging U.S. presidents about the Iraq war and U.S. foreign policy, which she felt was tilted too much in favor of Israel. She was forced to retire in 2010 after making comments recorded by a rabbi that some said were insensitive towards Israelis. She told them to “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to Poland, Germany, the U.S., and other countries.

Speaking to the Free Press in Dearborn in December 2010, Thomas stood by her remarks: “I paid the price for that, but it was worth it, to speak the truth.” She added to the controversy by saying in a talk in Dearborn that “Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists, no question in my opinion.” She was blasted by Jewish groups for her remarks and as a result, Wayne State University removed her name from a diversity award they had named after her.

Her supporters, though, said she was a loving person.

“Helen Thomas did not hate,” Geha said. “Helen Thomas loved people.”

Thomas was cremated earlier. During the services, a vase containing her ashes rested on a table along with a framed photo of her and holy bread that the priest blessed, waving a container from which smoke arose. Four Orthodox Christian priests — two Syrians, one Jordanian, and one Serbian — helped lead the services.

Thomas’ ashes were buried after today’s services in a private ceremony at a Detroit cemetery. She is survived by three of her sisters, ages 98, 95, and 90, and several nieces and nephews.